


Shatter and Shake

by Anonymous



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Accidental Pregnancy, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst with a Hopeful Ending, Ben Solo Needs A Hug, Communication Failure, Consensual Sex, F/M, For which I apologize, Lonely Hearts, Misunderstandings, One Night Stand, Probably Cultural Inaccuracies, Rey Needs A Hug (Star Wars), Reylo - Freeform, Unsafe Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-12
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-18 09:34:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29366340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Alone and lonely since taking a job that moved her from New York City to Tokyo, Rey Niima spots a tall man in the crowd that looks like he might be the only chance she has to make a new friend. An impulsive decision to try and strike up a conversation with a stranger on the subway leads to one wild night of passion and a lifetime of consequence that neither of them could have predicted.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 71
Kudos: 323
Collections: Reylo Creatives: Anniversary Exchange 2021





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [theaberrantwritergirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theaberrantwritergirl/gifts).



> This fic is for an exchange and I plotted the story to match the requests of the recipient. My big disclaimer for this story is that I've never been to Japan. I'm trying to keep the story a general tale about finding love away from the place you grew up in and learning to love a culture that isn't your own, rather than trying to focus too much on the specifics of a place I'm not extremely familiar with. I don't speak Japanese and I'm not an expert in Japanese culture, so please feel free to educate me if I've made any horrendous errors. Google is my friend but there's only so far it can take me on this journey.
> 
> I always try to handle any subject that I write about with care, so if you feel that I've missed a tag, please let me know.

It was impossible not to notice him.

He must have been well over six feet tall and with a broad chest and the shock of ink black hair on skin that was far too pale, he would have been noticeable anywhere. She would have found her eyes drawn to him on the London Underground or the subways of New York in America.

But this was Tokyo and in Tokyo this man was more than just a handsome face on an appealingly large frame. He was a beacon, a lighthouse, a symbol of comfort to her homesick heart.

He looked American, maybe British, and he probably spoke English.

She pushed her way through the crowd, earning several reproachful looks as she went, and sidled up beside him.

“Hello,” she said, her voice low and secretive. It wasn’t generally considered polite to talk on public transportation in Japan, something she had learned the hard way since she’d arrived here a few months ago. It was her third move since she’d turned eighteen a few years ago, but by far the hardest. The culture shock was real, and the language barrier was isolating.

The hulking behemoth in a blue sweater blinked down at her in surprise but remained stubbornly silent.

“Hi,” she repeated.

Nothing.

“You, uhm, you looked like you might speak English,” she said, hoping that offering him an explanation might get him to respond. “I just moved here and don’t really know anyone, so I thought…well I don’t know what I thought.”

She sighed. She’d taken the job in Tokyo when life in New York had started to get too comfortable, too familiar, but she hadn’t expected that she’d actually miss the companionship she’d had with her few friends and now that none of her coworkers spoke more than a few words of English and she spoke no words at all of Japanese, she’d begun to regret deciding to run off before she could get overly attached to people that might leave her.

Getting too attached was something she’d never be willing to do, but casual friendships were obviously something she’d grown to need.

This man, apparently, was a dead end in her search for that, since he was still staring at her with a look of vague confusion and nothing else.

“Sorry,” she muttered, pushing toward the door at the nearest stop without bothering to look at where she was or what part of town she’d be exiting in. She’d spent a day riding around the city and taking in the tourist attractions, something she normally wouldn’t be interested in but there wasn’t much else for her to do. If this was the wrong stop, she’d just catch the next train.

She didn’t want to stay here any more next to the large water buffalo sized man that she’d obviously made a fool of herself in front of.

She darted across the platform and up the stairs, her feet barely touching the rain-soaked ground of the unfamiliar street above when a large hand, warm and firm, grasped her by the elbow. She yanked her arm, flailing unsuccessfully against the unexpected touch and eyeing the empty neighborhood around her. There was clearly no help there, so she turned around prepared to scream and fight and bite and claw if she had to.

“Hey,” a deep voice rumbled. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. I called after you, but you didn’t hear me.”

She stopped writhing at the sound of a clipped American accent, and he let go of her immediately. She turned around sheepishly, realizing that he’s only grabbed her so tightly to keep her from falling when she’d pulled away from him so abruptly.

His eyes looked black in the dim light of the streetlamp but his brow was furrowed with concern as he hunched down slightly to look at her.

“I’m alright,” she huffed. “You just scared me.”

“Sorry,” he said again. “I just wanted to apologize. I’ve lived here a long time and I’m not used to people speaking to me in English anymore.”

“Strangers on the street don’t just come up to say hi?” she asked, a self depreciating smile twisting the corners of her mouth.

“That, yes,” he agreed. “But I don’t have any friends or family from back home that still speak to me, either. I haven’t spoken English with anyone in…well, about five years.”

She whistled, long and low. “That’s a long time. What do you do here?”

He smiled, just a quick twist of the lips, and her heart did a slow roll inside her chest. “I’m a writer.”

“In English?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t you have an agent or something?”

“We email,” he said shortly.

“Well, I guess that explains it," she said, shaking her head in bafflement. She'd really thought she was the one who needed friends, but maybe he was even worse off than she was. Unless he had plenty of friends who spoke Japanese. That was probably the case, but still, she _wanted_ to think of him as another person like her, just lonely and looking for someone to connect with.

“So, what were you trying to ask me?”

She rocked back on her heels, embarrassed. “Nothing,” she admitted. “Not really. I just saw you and you looked like you might speak English and no one else I know here does and all my friends, well all three of them, are on New York time and…”

“You’re lonely,” he said quietly.

The breath rushed out of her lungs. “Yes.”

He nodded, his eyes a glimmer in the night as he considered her. The silence stretched between them until she began to fidget uneasily, and she thought that he seemed to be a man that had embraced the quiet, become part of it instead of railing against its presence the way that she often did.

“So,” she said, drawing the word out so that it hung in the air like a question.

“So,” he said, and it was somehow an answer and an agreement. “I’m Ben. Ben Solo.”

“Rey,” she offered. “Rey Niima.”

“Well, Rey Niima, what are you doing here in Tokyo?”

“I work here,” she said simply. “There was a position open at my company, graphic design, and I was tired of New York so here I am.”

“Ambitious,” he observed, and she frowned. It hadn’t felt like ambition, it had felt like cowardice. Finn, Poe, and Rose hadn’t said as much but she knew they’d been disappointed in her decision to leave so abruptly. It had been a good move for her career, but they’d known her well enough to know she was running.

And that had been part of the problem.

They had been too close, known her too well, made her too vulnerable.

“I suppose,” she murmured, shifting and looking away from him for the first time since he’s grabbed her arm. They were still standing in the light of the streetlamp, the road empty and quiet. The houses looked more traditional than most of what she’d seen in the city and there were no buildings reaching like cold fingers toward the sky.

Wherever she was, it was a far cry from the hustle and bustle of her apartment building and the towering modern lines of the building she worked in every day.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“I don’t actually know where I am,” she admitted. “This wasn’t my stop, I just got off because I embarrassed.”

He sighed and shook his head slightly. “That was the last train for the night,” he told her. “The last one runs at midnight and they’ll start back up at five o’clock tomorrow.”

“What?” she said, tugging out her phone to glance at the time. It was indeed after midnight, but it hadn’t occurred to her that she wouldn’t be able to catch another train to her stop. The subway ran twenty- four hours a day in New York. “Is there a bus in this neighborhood?”

She turned to glare at the surrounding houses as though they were personally to blame for her current predicament.

“Not this late,” he said with shrug. “The best you’ll be able to do at this hour is a taxi.”

She huffed, shifting her bag on her shoulder and scowling at him. “I don’t speak any Japanese to call for one,” she reminded him.

“Oh, right.” He paused again, the silence lengthening as her irritation rose. “I live nearby,” he said eventually.

“Okay?”

“You could come back to my place,” he explained. “If you wanted to, of course.”

“Are you asking me to sleep with you?” It wasn’t a shocking concept, men had propositioned her before, but he wasn’t the type that was usually this forward about it.

“No,” he said quickly, the tips of his ears turning pink at the suggestion. “Just…It’s just that you seemed lonely and now you’re a little stuck here and I thought you might like a place to crash for the night instead of paying the expensive cab fare.” He looked a little flustered as he finished, he sentence, his hair rippling in the light as he shoved his fingers through.

“And the chance to make a friend,” he added a few moments later, as though this time it was him that was unnerved by the silence.

She squinted at him, her lips pursed as she thought it over. He was a big guy, intimidating by pure size alone, but his eyes were soft and he was wearing a blue cardigan, pushed up over his forearms. He l _ooked_ like a writer—intellectual and harmless—and she had always been a scrappy fighter that was willing to cheat if she needed to.

“Okay,” she agreed.

“Yeah?” He looked surprised by her answer but the swift smile that he gave her made her stomach flutter with nerves. It softened his face, gave his features a boyish and charming edge that she found intensely appealing. “Well, it’s…the house is this way,” he said, stepping around her and leading her down the street.

“So, you live here? This looks…very Japanese.”

He chuckled. “It’s a walk from here—I usually get off at the next stop—but not a very long one. It’s very Japanese everywhere in Japan.”

She nodded, forgetting that he couldn’t see her in the dark. “I mean it’s old Japanese. More traditional than where I live. Less modern,” she said, finally settling on the right word to describe the difference.

“And quieter,” he agreed.

“You’d need that, I suppose, as a writer.”

“You don’t need it? As an artist?”

She tucked a lip between her teeth and glanced sideways at his silhouette as they walked she wondered what he’d say if she told him that silence let the loneliness in a little too much, that she turned the speaker volume up in her apartment when she worked and left it on while she slept because if she didn’t the absence of sound would whisper to her and it would be the names of all the people she’d failed or those that had failed her.

“Artists are different,” she said instead. “We crave chaos, you know?”

“I think I’ve heard something kind of like that.”

She only hummed a response to that, noncommittal as she turned her head to take in the quiet houses and the blossoms of flowers whose petals were unfamiliar to her for more reasons than just the shadows that engulphed them in the night.

“Do you know the names of all these flowers?” She wasn’t sure why she asked. Something to say, maybe. Or a genuine sense of curiosity about how much he knew about his adopted home. Or maybe she wanted to hear the sound of a friendly voice and his was so deep and rumbling that it soothed like the crash of waves at the beach she’d visited once as a child.

“Some of them,” he said, pointing and rattling off names made of sounds that she didn’t think her own mouth could conjure. He didn’t ask her why she wanted to know, and she decided after a moment of listening to him as he moved from flower blossoms to the names of the other items they saw on the street that maybe he just wanted a reason to fill the silence as much as she did.

“What do you know about stars?” he asked, changing the subject suddenly.

She blinked and glanced at the sky. It wasn’t cloudy and the night sky was dazzling with scattered shimmering dots and the pale sliver of the moon. “Nothing, I guess,” she admitted. “They’re pretty to look at.”

“There is that,” he agreed. “But they tell stories.”

“The stars?”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “You see that one there?”

She followed his finger with her eyes as he pointed. It was hard to say for sure which dot he was pointing to. “I think so?”

“That’s Vega, it’s in the Lyra constellation. And that one,” he shifted to point again, “is Altair, in the Aquila constellation.”

“Okay?”

“Well, every year in Japan, on the seventh day of the seventh month, we celebrate the Tanabata Festival, the star festival. See, the story goes that long ago, beside a great river, a star weaver named Orihime,” he pointed to the first star again, “fell in love with a cow shepherd named Hikoboshi.”

She followed his finger back to the second star and waited for him to finish the story. She already had a bad feeling about this.

“Now, Orihime’s father didn’t like this, because she wasn’t doing her duties and since he was the emperor of heaven, Tentei, he was able to separate them. He said they would never see each other again.”

Rey snorted in annoyance. “That’s bullshit.”

Ben laughed and nodded. “I guess Orihime thought so, too, because she was able to convince her father to let her see her beloved once a year. The Milky Way keeps them apart every other day, except the day of the star festival, and then they only get to see each other if the weather is clear.”

She frowned again, something twisting inside her at the idea of that forced isolation. At least she had chosen her exile this time. “Still doesn’t seem like a very happy story.”

“I guess not,” he acknowledged. “But better than never seeing each other at all. It’s my favorite festival, reminds to me to be grateful for the things I do have in life.”

She fell silent at that and kept pace beside him for several blocks, grateful that he seemed content to fill in the gaps in their small talk, until they arrived a small house, very similar to the others that they’d passed by on the way.

“This is it,” he said, waving a hand at the house and looking down at her with a conflicted expression. “I _will_ call you a taxi if you’d prefer not to come in.”

It was late and what little moonlight there was to be had shone down on his face, illuminating the long nose and the endless depth of his eyes. Something about that story, the idea of being alone every day for the rest of her existence except for one lucky, unrainy day of the year had settled a fear over her heart.

“Ben?”

“Yeah?”

“I’d like to come in.”


	2. Chapter 2

She clutched her arms around her stomach as she looked around the interior of his home, a reflexive gesture that she’d picked up as a kid to self-soothe when she was nervous. He’d been nothing but kind to her, but she wasn’t used to accepting hospitality from strangers and there was a strange tension between them since she’d agreed to come in, a quiet hyper awareness that was evident whenever one of them looked at the other and found them already staring. 

The house was small, but cozier than she’d expected for a man living alone. Where she’d thought that the sliding doors would conceal rooms with bare walls and stark furniture, instead she found plush surfaces on time worn couches and lovely paintings that looked as though they had graced the walls for much longer than five years.

It puzzled her, how lived in and homey it all seemed, until she remembered that her own apartment—rented through the company she worked for—was turned over to her with all the furniture she’d need already in place. Perhaps whatever he’d done to live here, rent or buy, he’d negotiated to have the previous occupants leave it move-in ready and fully furnished. They must have left everything but their clothes and toiletries, she surmised, because everything in the house seemed like it had always been there.

“So the bed’s in here,” he said, sliding the door open to revel a large bed piled high with pillows and blankets. “I use the other room as an office so this is the only bedroom right now, but the couch in the living room is big enough for me to sleep on. I’ve done it before,” he said with a rueful smile.

“Ben,” she said, looking back at the couch in the living room before stepping a little closer to him. She’d already made her mind up on the walk here, but if listening to him ramble on about the stars hadn’t done it, then his willingness to let her take the bed while he slept on the couch in his own home would have finished her off. “You don’t have to sleep on the couch.”

He turned to look at the bed with a frown. “It’s a big bed, but probably not big enough for both of us to sleep in it without touching and I don’t want you to have to sleep on the couch when it’s my fault that you’re stuck here.”

“ _ Ben,”  _ she said again, unable to keep the humor out of her voice or the smile from tipping up the corners of her mouth. She placed one hand on his chest, his heartbeat fluttering under her palm. “I know you’re going to touch me. I  _ want _ you to touch me.”

He froze, blinking down at her quietly for a moment before taking a deep breath and asking her, “Are you asking me to sleep with you?”

Heat flamed in her cheeks and her mouth opened and closed on words that her tongue wouldn’t form before she noticed the teasing glint in his eye and the slight smile that he couldn’t quite contain. It hit her then, that he was repeating the words that she’d said to him earlier, when he’d asked if she’d like to come back to his place instead of taking a taxi.

She bit her lip, trying to choke back a shocked giggle as she leaned in closer to him. He was so cute, so  _ sweet  _ and playful, and it made her bolder. She dropped her voice suggestively, letting her breath warm his cheek. “What if I am?”

He seemed to pause for a moment, his eyes raking over her face as though to judge how serious she was and contemplate his response. He looked so pensive, so serious, that she feared for the space of a single breath that perhaps she’d misjudged, overstepped the boundaries of the friendship that he’d offered her, and her heart thudded painfully in her chest at the possibility of rejection.

“I think I’d like that,” he said softly, interrupting the wild panic in her mind with words that soothed and kindled hope and arousal instead.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” he agreed, cupping her elbows and rubbing her arms with his thumbs. “If you’re sure?”

“I’m rarely sure about anything,” she admitted, something inside her compelling her to be honest with him. It was hard not to be when he looked at her with those amber eyes, so intense that it seemed as though he could see all the way through to her soul anyway.

It pulled up vulnerability that she’d tried all her life to bury, or to flee from as she had when she’d left New York, but when he looked at her, she felt pinned and trapped, unable to do anything but let him in.

“You need to be sure about this,” he countered. “I don’t really do this kind of thing and I’m not going to do it now if you think you’ll regret it.”

“I won’t,” she promised, hoping hard inside her heart that it was a promise she’d be able to keep.

He never took his eyes off her face as he leaned down, his lips brushing against hers with the softest of touches, light as a butterfly’s wing but warm and somehow electric. She parted her lips in surprise, her breath coming in a short, sharp gasp against his mouth before she leaned up on her toes and sank into the glory of his kiss.

The first touch of his tongue to hers seemed to ignite something in both of them, a hunger and a need that had been pushed down below the surface and roared into sudden and vibrant life at the first taste of each other.

She offered him only encouragement as he backed her into the bedroom, leaving a trail of clothing behind them on the floor as they stripped each other in a haze of passion and a flurry of hands. By the time her knees hit the bed frame, she was wearing only her bra and panties and his chest was bare. Her fingers were working frantically at the button of his jeans and he was fumbling artlessly with her bra strap as he kissed a path across her shoulder, nuzzling greedily into her skin with the tip of his nose.

She’d never thought of noses as being particularly attractive or important but on him, it was somehow  _ everything _ and she shook helplessly at the feeling of it against her flesh.

She’d been fucked before this, but it became obvious to her in that moment that she’d never been  _ touched _ before. No one—not her occasional disappointing boyfriend or her friends in New York—had ever been this close to her, this frighteningly intimate. Ben slipped past all of her defenses, his open response to her leading her to believe that he was as lonely and touch starved as she was.

They fell onto the bed together in a tangle of limbs and she laughed as he swore viciously.

“It’s fine,” she assured him, hooking her leg over his hip and straddling him before leaning down to pepper his face with tiny kisses. She wasn’t usually so bold and never so affectionate but here, with him, she felt different. There didn’t seem to be a need for her to be guarded or defensive and she reveled in the feeling of freedom, in the unexpected connection with this stranger that she felt she knew at least as well as she knew herself.

He’d managed to mostly get his pants off before he’d fallen on her and she hummed approvingly as she took him into her hand and explored his length, testing the width of him as she tried unsuccessfully to close her fingers around him.

“Condom?” she asked, licking her lips in anticipation.

His eyes widened, almost comical in their sudden realization. “I…I don’t have any.”

She rocked back, pursing her lips as she considered him. “I don’t either,” she admitted. “I wasn’t planning on this.”

“Neither was I,” he said, his voice choked as his head dropped back against the pillow in frustration.

“I’m not on birth control,” she said, not willing to lie to him even when she was wet and aching to be filled. “But…”

“But?”

“I still want to,” she said softly. “I know it’s risky and you don’t know me. There’s always the chance of an STI or pregnancy or whatever…”

“I still want to,” he interrupted, his fingers trailing lines up and down her spine and across her hips. “I know the risks, but I still want you.”

She nodded, exhaling her fear that he’d more rational than she was capable of being right now into the still air around them.

“Should we try to pull out or…”

“No,” she said quickly. She should have said yes, she  _ knew _ that, but in this little bubble they were in right now the consequences that she might have to face tomorrow felt distant and indistinct—the kind of thing that happened in cautionary tales and whispered warnings, but only ever happened to  _ someone else _ —and she wanted to feel him inside her when her body erased everything but ecstasy from his mind. “Are you okay with that?”

“Yes,” he said, caressing her stiffened nipple through the thin fabric of the bra he hadn’t quite managed to unhook. “If that’s what you want.”

“It is,” she said, her voice firm and certain. He nodded, miraculously agreeing with her and the wild urges that had overtaken her and she leaned in to kiss him tenderly before she leveraged herself over him and lined him up with her entrance.

There was no need for any more words as she sank down onto him, filling herself with him as he pushed inside her. She tossed her head back, a moan slipping through to interrupt the silence and she wasn’t sure if it come from his lips or her own.

It felt good, right to her in a way that nothing else ever had, a fullness that drained away her need to rush and left her clenching around him as she rose and fell in a soft and unhurried rhythm that left them both teetering on the edge for what felt like an eternity.

He didn’t seem to mind that she was taking her time, content to murmur praise against her mouth as he kissed her or let his hands roam over her body as she moved her hips experimentally, seeking the best angles that made her whole body shake with need and pleasure.

The orgasm took her by surprise, sweeping up to engulf her before she really even knew it was coming. It pulled a startled cry from her, and a deep moan of satisfaction from him he drove his hips up into her and fucked her through it. She expected him to follow her over, but he waited until the aftershocks had faded away and she blinked down at him, flushed and trembling with echoes of her climax, to roll her beneath him.

She squeaked as he settled over her, his weight resting on his elbows as he kissed her hungrily and began to thrust his body into her. He pulled her leg up, hitching it over his hip to open her further, to make room for even more of him as he hit places inside her that she knew had never been touched before.

Her rhythm had been lazy and soft but his was driven and focused, each drive of his hips intent on taking and giving as much pleasure as possible, and he didn’t stop until he’d driven her to another peak, shattering her world around him until he was the only thing that remained.

Only then did he let himself go, allow himself to follow her over the edge, coating her insides with long waves of warmth as he cried out her name.

***

She woke up in his bed as the early light of morning crept slowly across the floor. She wasn’t usually an early riser on weekends, but she wasn’t used to the heavy weight of his body at her back, hot and inviting as he pressed in close to her, their bare skin touching everywhere that he could get to her.

She rolled over to face him, examining his face as he sighed at the disturbance and then relaxed back into sleep. Memories of the night before rushed into her mind, a blur of warmth and intimacy that still felt strangely right even when he no longer had his hands on her to cloud her judgment.

Though she had to admit her judgment had been a little clouded before he’d ever put his hands on her…maybe it had been less the hands and more the eyes. That deep and penetrating stare, the patient and lonely way he’d looked at her.

Not that there was anything wrong with his hands, either. They were large and lovely, with long broad fingers and…

Her thoughts shattered abruptly, breath freezing in her throat as the sunlight streaming in through the window glinted dully off the metal band that she hadn’t noticed the night before. The one he wore on the ring finger of his left hand.

A wedding ring.

Fury burned through her, acidic and bitter as it tore through her veins and coated her tongue with cruelty.

“You  _ son of a bitch, _ ” she snarled, flinging the blanket off and jumping to her feet in a haze of adrenaline and self-loathing.

“What?” He sat up quickly, rubbing a hand over his face and trying to follow the path she was weaving across his bedroom as she searched for her clothes and tugged them roughly over skin that had been tainted by his touch. “Rey what’s wrong?”

“Fuck you,” she said, leaning into the satisfaction she felt at his wounded expression. He was a monster and he deserved it. “You’re disgusting.”

“I don’t understand,” he began, the words tumbling to halt as he jumped up to follow her out of the room, trying to catch her as she tugged on her shoes without bothering to sit down or even stop walking.

She wasn’t making much progress hopping on foot across the living room, but she’d be damned if she was going to stay here and let him try to talk his way out of this.

“Rey, please wait. Just tell me what I did wrong.”

“What you did?” she asked, voice cracking on a high-pitched laugh that held no humor. “Why don’t you ask your _ wife _ ?”

The color drained from his face and he stopped, naked and tousled from sleep, dead in the center of his living room. “What?”

“I saw the ring, Ben,” she said sharply, backing away from him toward the front door. “I don’t know what your problem is, but I don’t do that to other people. I don’t hurt people on purpose. So, this was clearly a mistake and it’s  _ over _ .”

He glanced at his hand, eyes widening as he began to shake his head in protest. “No, Rey, wait! It’s not what it looks like…”

“Do you really think I’m that stupid?” she asked, each word hate filled and brittle as she flung the front door open and stopped to glare at him reproachfully over her shoulder. “That’s what liars always say.”

She darted out the door, slamming it behind her before marching purposefully up the street toward the subway station, ignoring the curious looks of his neighbors as she went. 


	3. Chapter 3

_ Two Months Later _

Ben’s house had never felt emptier than it had since the morning she’d left.

It didn’t make sense, and he told himself that over and over again as his fingers tapped the keys of his laptop, working on a story he could barely focus on, or as he wandered the still rooms, his hands running over the familiar surfaces of furniture.

He’d barely known her, he knew almost nothing about her beyond her name and the way her face looked in the middle of the night, her lips slightly parted as she’d gasped and clenched around him.

And still, he couldn’t get her out of his mind.

Her name.

Her face.

The ecstasy he’d seen there, put there.

And the betrayal.

He’d put that there, too, as much as he hated it.

Not on purpose, he’d never have hurt her or anyone else intentionally. It had been a mistake, an oversight, a force of self-protecting habit that didn’t let his mind dwell on the past or his mouth to speak of it.

She would have reacted differently if he had told her before he’d slept with her, but he hadn’t been thinking of those things. He didn’t think of his wife often, not anymore. Five years was a long time for the pain to dull, for the guilt to subside, especially if he didn’t let his thoughts linger on her memory.

He hadn’t been a good husband to her, and it had eaten away at him after her death until he’d learned to box it up and pack it away. A lesson learned, a price paid.

He had failed her as he had failed his parents.

Some things just weren’t meant to be loved, and he had reconciled himself to the fact that he was one of them, only pulling out memories of his wife when he was lonely and needed a reminder that it wasn’t fair to anyone else to ask them to love him. Not when he was such an abysmal failure.

He never went out, never dated, never spoke to anyone unless he had to. It had kept his heart safe and kept him from dragging anyone else into his mess.

Until Rey had come along.

That smile had taken his breath away. Made him forget what he had tried so hard to remember, that he wasn’t good, wasn’t worthy.

She’d slid into his bubble, all bright smiles and hot skin, and obliterated his defenses against human companionship, against human touch.

And he’d hurt her in his carelessness.

He was sure that it was another lesson, that he was unfit for anything but being alone, but it wasn’t fair that it had come at such a high price for Rey. She’d done nothing wrong and she’d suffered the worst of the consequences for his mistake.

He’d thought about tracking her down, trying to apologize, but even if he had been able to find her in a city of this size with nothing more than her name, he wasn’t sure that she’d let him explain.

He ran a finger absently over his wedding band, wondering if he even fully understood himself why he had never taken it off. Perhaps it simply felt disloyal after his failures as a husband. He had failed her in life, he couldn’t be disloyal to her now.

Expect that he had, with Rey.

He pushed a hand through his hair, frustrated at the months of his thoughts running in circles. There was nothing he could do, for either of them.

Not his wife.

Not Rey.

He had failed them both. Should never have brought Rey back to his home in the first place or chased after her when she’d darted off the subway train.

He’d known it was a mistake, but she’d looked so sad, so heartbroken, that he hadn’t been able to resist the urge.

He pushed away from the desk, closing his laptop with an irritated huff. Maybe he should try to find her after all. She might listen, if he asked her nicely enough, apologized enough times…

A knock at the door broke his concentration, a welcome reprieve from his thoughts. It was quiet, so timid that he wasn’t sure he’d actually heard it until it came again. Nothing more than a rapid little tap, like whoever was there was hoping he wasn’t at home.

_ Knock, knock, knock _

“I’m coming,” he called, hoping they wouldn’t leave before he could get to the door. No one ever came to visit him, so whatever had brought them here, it must be important.

He considered briefly that it might be his mother, unlikely as it was that she’d show up on his doorstep after all these years, because he couldn’t figure out who it might be otherwise.

He opened the door to the whip of wind and rain, his first wild thought at seeing a petite brunette standing just outside that he’d been right about Leia... but a second glance told him that this woman was too tall, too young, too hard in the eyes to be Leia. His mother looked at everyone else with cool calculation, but she had always been soft eyed for Ben and his father.

He wished he hadn’t been a disappointment to her.

Or to this woman, he realized, shock and excitement streaking under skin like the lightning across the sky as he recognized her.

“Rey?”

“I need to come in,” she said, and her voice was clipped, rushed. It was a command, not a question, and he stepped back to make room for her to pass, dripping and shivering as she went.

“Sure,” he agreed. “You’re always welcome here, Rey.” 

Was that true? He hardly knew her, but his instincts told him that it was, that would never be able to turn her away.

“I’m sure your wife would disagree,” she snapped, her gaze roving around the still and empty house. “Is she here?”

“My wife?”

She nodded, her arms wrapped around her middle as she chewed absentmindedly on her bottom lip.

“No,” he said quietly. “She isn’t.”

“Good, I don’t want to have to fight with someone else to be able to get this out. Can we sit down?” she asked, waving an arm toward the living room.

“Of course,” he agreed, leading her into the other room and sitting down on the couch as she followed him, perching on the edge of a cushion as far from him as she could get and looking for all the world like a bird poised on the edge of flight.

He got the distinct impression that any sudden movement from him would cause her to bolt and that if she did, he’d never see her again.

Even his breaths were slow and controlled as he waited for her to speak, to ask him about his wife, to let him explain what had happened.

He stopped breathing entirely when she finally found her words, the air knocked out of him like it had been when he’d fallen as a child and had the wind knocked out of him, his lungs suddenly screaming for air over the rush of sound in his head.

“Did you hear me, Ben? I said I’m pregnant.”

“I heard you,” he said dimly, tipping his head to take in the dark circles under her eyes and the hastily scooped up ponytail in her hair. She was pale and her hands were shaking.

“Well?” she demanded. “Aren’t you going to ask me if it’s yours?”

“I assume you wouldn’t be here otherwise,” he said. “How—I mean…when did you find out? Are you…okay?” He hesitated on the last word, certain by the look of her and the slight tremble in her lip that she was far from okay.

“Yesterday,” she said on a huff of breath, like she’d been preparing to fight him about whether it was his or not and was relieved to answer a simple question instead. “I just…I didn’t know what to do, so I came here.”

“Of course you came here,” he agreed. “I meant what I said, you’re always welcome here.”

She squinted at him, sharp eyes suddenly keen and suspicious. “Do you really understand what I’m saying to you? I am  _ pregnant,”  _ she repeated again. “You know? With a baby? A baby that is yours?”

“I understand the concept,” he said, wiping the sweat from his hands on the stiff fabric of his jeans. “I don’t understand how you think that would somehow make you  _ less _ welcome in my home?”

Her mouth hung open for a long moment before she snapped her jaws shut, teeth clacking on the impact. “You have a wife,” she said slowly. “I imagine that it’s going to be a problem.”

“I don’t,” he corrected, watching her face for her reaction. “I don’t have a wife, not anymore.”

“Oh,” she said, her teeth settling into the flesh of her bottom lip as she contemplated him. “You’re…divorced?”

“No.” He waited, swallowing hard as the word washed over her, her mind working quickly to make sense of it.

“You’re a widower.” She was quiet, pensive as the answer came to her and she processed the implications. “You’re not married.”

“I was not cheating on my wife when I was with you,” he said. “Though I do understand why you’d think so.”

“The ring…”

“I know,” he said, flexing his hand and skimming his gaze over the plain band on his finger. “It was a long time ago, but I never…there was never the possibility of someone else, so I never took it off.”

“I shouldn’t have assumed,” she said, a sigh slipping out through lips that were cracked from her constant nibbling. She looked even paler now, even more worried as she considered that he might react poorly to how she’d left him before.

“It was a reasonable assumption. I should have taken it off or explained. I wanted to, to find you and try to make things right but you were angry, and I didn’t know how you’d react to seeing me again.”

She laughed, tipping her head back and closing her eyes on the sound. It was cold—sharp and bitter in a way that he wouldn’t have expected from her.

“I would have hated it,” she admitted. “And now look, you’re the one who should be mad, with me showing up here not only pregnant but also so wrong about everything.”

“I’m not mad,” he said. “Surprised, happy to see you again, but not mad.”

She was fidgeting, her fingers tapping on her sides as she held herself and her foot rapping out a rhythmless beat on his floor.

“Do you even want to be a father?”

“Do you want to be a mother?”

She sat back on the couch, shivering in her wet clothes. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I didn’t…My parents left me, when I was little. They just walked out the door one day and never came back. I don’t even remember them. I don’t know how to be a mother.”

He was quiet as she spoke, her voice vibrating with echoes of pain and betrayal and lost hope. Her eyes were flat when she looked at him.

“You didn’t answer my question,” she said pointedly.

“I never thought about it,” he said after a moment. “My relationship with my parents was complicated, probably unhealthy. We don’t speak.”

“Your wife didn’t want children?”

“Maybe, when we first got married. I wasn’t a very good husband,” he admitted. “I didn’t know how to have a relationship. My communication skills are shit and I wasn’t very good at giving her the love or attention that she needed. She wasn’t happy and she stopped talking about kids long before I would have been ready to have them. We lived like strangers in this house before she died.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sure she loved you.”

It was a platitude, the type of thing that one said to strangers when they had nothing else to say. It rattled around inside him, in all the hollow places that her death had left behind, trying and failing to find a soft place to land.

“She did, “he agreed. “But I didn’t deserve it. I didn’t deserve her, and I didn’t deserve kids.”

They sat in silence as her clothes dried and the time ticked by unnoticed—two very broken strangers and one fragile life that connected them.

“I don’t know what to do,” she said, breaking the tension with the admission. She looked at him quickly, embarrassment evident on her pinkened cheeks. “I hate not knowing what to do.”

“I want to be a father,” he said, finally answering her question as she stared at him in surprise. “I want the baby, Rey, and you if you’ll have me.”

“What?”

“I failed my wife, but I won’t fail you. I want another chance,” he said calmly, speaking the certainty that he suddenly couldn’t shake, what he’d known since she’d run out of his house. That there was something about her that stirred the things inside him he’d locked away.

She was sitting forward on the couch cushion again, her muscles tense under the wet fabric of her clothes. There was a wild undercurrent in the air between them, a light in her eyes that was terrified. She was an animal in a trap during the split second between when she realized what was happening and the final moment the door closed.

“You don’t have to marry me,” he said quickly, recognizing the urge to flee in her eyes and the fragile way she held her mouth. He’d felt it enough times himself to know the look of it on another. “You could just…You could just stay here, live here with the baby. With me. And if you were ever unhappy or you thought I wasn’t being a good father…then you could go.”

“You don’t even know me,” she said with a shake of her head. She back fractionally, a slight relaxation that told him he’d been right not to offer marriage. She would see it as a way to tie her down, to make promises that could only ever be broken.

“And you don’t know me,” he agreed. “But you could. We could get to know each other while you were here, and I could help you with the baby.”

“Were your parents good people?” she asked. Her eyes were searching his face, judging what she saw there as she waited for an answer.

He sighed and shoved a hand through his hair. “They were kind,” he said carefully. “They gave me everything I could have asked for, materially anyway. They were just…busy. There wasn’t much time to spend with me and they didn’t understand me.”

“Is that why you don’t speak to them?”

He could see it, the guarded way that she was considering him. How could he be a father if he didn’t have good parents? A good partner if he’d failed his wife?

“I took off when I was eighteen,” he admitted. “I lived in a lot of places, got mixed up with some bad people and eventually ended up here. They didn’t like what I’d done with my life or that I’d chosen to remain here instead of coming home after my wife died.”

She nodded and chewed nervously on the edge of her thumbnail. “They’re not proud of you now?”

“I….I don’t really know. I know that I want better for any kid that I have than what I got from them. Kindness and money aren’t enough for a kid. They need love.”

A single tear slid down her cheek before she wiped it away with the back of her hand. “I don’t know if I can love someone else,” she said weakly. She kept her eyes glued to the floor by his feet, unwilling to meet his eyes. “I never learned how.”

“I guess I never did, either,” he said. “But I’m willing to try.”

She sniffed and laughed faintly, a hollow sound that rang with years of disappointment. “I don’t know if I’m willing to try. I made friends in New York, you know?” She glared at him, eyes watery with tears that she resolutely ignored. “Finn and Poe. Rose. They cared about me, but it scared the hell out of me, so I ran. I ran all the way to Tokyo. I don’t know if I  _ can  _ love a baby and I certainly don’t know if I can ever love you.”

“You wouldn’t have to love me,” he said, his voice catching on the last syllable. “I know I don’t deserve to be loved, Rey. I’ve proven that over and over again in my life. But I think I could love the baby and I think I could love you and maybe…maybe that would be enough.”

“Kids deserve a family,” she said after a moment, each word bitten off, harsh and firm. “I don’t know much about babies and kids, but I know that. They deserve a family, and they deserve to be loved, and they deserve a mother that  _ stays _ .”

He stayed quiet, sensing that she needed a minute to think it all over and process what he’d said, what she felt. If he pushed too much, she’d run away again.

“I need time,” she said after a minute. “I need to think about all of this and figure out what I can do, how much I have to give.”

“You’re welcome to stay here,” he offered. “I  _ will _ sleep on the couch this time.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head and giving him a tight smile that he thought was supposed to be reassuring. “I appreciate the offer, but I need some space.”

“Okay,” he said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. “Can I get your number? Give you mine? I want to be able to stay in touch.”

She nodded jerkily and it took him less than a minute to have her number saved under his contacts. A little connection, something that soothed his anxiety. He scrolled through the list of names until he reached hers and pressed the call button, waiting until her phone screen lit up so she could save his number, too.

“There,” he said, tucking his phone back in his pocket. “Now you can call me if you need anything.”

“Thanks,” she said, getting to her feet and looking down at him, her expression inscrutable. “I mean that. Thanks for…being so understanding, I guess.”

“Sure,” he agreed. He rubbed his palms on his thighs, removing the sweat of his nervousness and trying not to reach for her. “Let me know when you decide what you want to do.”

“I will,” she said, lips barely curving on another tight smile before she slipped back out the door into the rain.


	4. Chapter 4

The rain was still coming down in sheets when Rey stepped out of Ben’s house for the second time. The sky was cold, and the wind cut through the layers of clothing that she wore, leaving her cold and miserable as she darted toward the subway station.

She’d been cold before—miserable, hungry, frightened—none of these were new experiences to her after what she’d endured as a child. She’d been able to push forward through it, had even convinced herself that she was numb to it, that it didn’t matter.

The doors of the subway train closed behind her as she huddled in the silence and warmth inside, arms clenched around her middle. It was a habit that she’d developed as a child, a method to self-soothe, but now it held a different meaning.

She wasn’t sure how she felt about being a mother, if she was capable of loving in the way that a baby deserved to be loved, but she knew that she didn’t want any harm to come to the life that was cradled in her womb. Suddenly it mattered if she was cold, or hungry, or frightened, because someone else now depended on her to take care of herself.

Fear that she would fail to do the right thing for either of them was strong enough to smother all of her rational thought. If it hadn’t been, she might never have run to Ben. Not when she’d thought he was married, and she’d be destroying everyone’s lives by showing up with a problem she couldn’t imagine a solution to.

Finding out that he didn’t have a wife had been the greatest relief she’d ever experienced in her life. The story behind it was tragic, and she felt guilty that she was so relieved when he was so obviously still hurting from his loss but knowing that she hadn’t hurt an innocent person by sleeping with her husband had been such a heavy weight off of Rey’s shoulders that she’d nearly cried from that alone.

It hit her suddenly as she stared aimlessly at the strangers on the train that she’d never even asked him for his wife’s name, or anything else about her. The woman must have been young when she died if she was close to Ben in age and she hadn’t even asked him what had happened to her or how he’d managed to go on without her.

He’d said that he was a bad husband, that she hadn’t been happy in their marriage, but he’d never said that he hadn’t loved her.

The guilt of that hung over Rey as she finally reached her stop and jogged out of the subway station onto the street above. Her neighborhood was a stark contrast to the quiet roads that surrounded Ben’s home. Her apartment was much closer to the booming heart of the city, where noise and people swirled beneath the high rise of buildings that stretched up into the sky.

Here Tokyo reminded her more of New York, with a familiar fast pace and high energy. There was no one in her neighborhood or even in her building that would have recognized her or known her name. The anonymity of it had soothed her urge to run when she’d first arrived, but now it seemed to smother her in cold isolation.

She had no one to go to, no one to ask for advice. Any thoughts of calling her friends back in New York had been pushed firmly away when she had thought that she’d gotten pregnant man—how could she ever face telling them how monumentally she had fucked up? —and even now that she knew that wasn’t an issue, she couldn’t imagine their reactions to finding out she was pregnant.

What could they possibly say?

Sorry you’re knocked up and alone, maybe you shouldn’t have run off to Tokyo?

She snorted as she slipped into her apartment, closing and locking the door behind her before stripping out of her wet clothes and dropping them haphazardly on the floor behind her as she made her way to the bathroom.

The was shivering and a quick glance in the mirror told her that her lips were already tinged with blue. She was doing a terrible job of taking care of herself so far, she admitted, though she wasn’t sure that it was quite bad enough that she needed to let Ben take care of her instead.

She turned the water on hot and stepped beneath the shower spray, her skin tingling as the warm seeped in to combat the cold in her muscles. It would have been nice to relax into the steamy spray and let her mind be cleansed as much as her body, but her breasts were sore and heavier than usual and there was a constant hum of nausea that sat low in her stomach, warring with a day’s worth of hunger.

Her body seemed determined to remind her of what she’d done and the predicament that she was in, unwilling to let her find solace in distraction.

She sat in the center of her bed in her lonely apartment, chewing on crackers and ignoring the crumbs on the sheets, until the gray of the stormy sky slowly faded to black. Night should have brought sleep, but her thoughts were tumbling over themselves too rapidly for her to find any peace.

She had always been alone and proud of herself for her self-sufficiency, her pride refusing to let her lean on others. Her fear refusing to let her get close to them even when her pride failed her.

But now, she was terrified. Her fear of facing this challenge alone was suddenly greater than her fear of having to depend on someone else. Her pride was nothing when she compared it to the possibility of failing a child the way her own parents had failed her.

Memories of her parents flooded her mind unbidden, the few broken fragments that remained rising up to torment her as she flopped over onto her stomach in her bed and pounded the pillows with her fists.

She finally had someone that was offering to take care of her, to help her without trying to tie her down or guilt her into giving more than she was capable of, and it wasn’t even  _ for her _ .

It was for the baby.

If she hadn’t been pregnant, would he have even wanted her?

The thought of it hurt her, the imagined rejection a spear of pain that made tears prick at her eyes, and she sniffled as she buried her face in the blankets. She tried to ignore the logical side of her mind as it reminded her that she would have driven him away if he’d tried to care about her without the pregnancy.

That was what she had always done, run from others and drive them away before they could hurt her, reject her. She wouldn’t let them make promises to her that they could break. It hurt too much.

If Ben were only willing to take care of her because of the baby—because he wanted a second chance at having a family, she had to concede that if she allowed him to—it would be for the same reason. Because she couldn’t run from this—not from the baby and maybe not from him.

The thought of having something that was hers, that was permanent, shook her to core and shattered the defenses that she’d kept so carefully around her heart.

Maybe she was being unfair, maybe she was trapping him with a situation that he’d asked for, but he was the one that had offered to be there for her and their child. He hadn’t looked horrified by the pregnancy and his last glimpse at her had seemed almost hopeful.

If he didn’t want to be trapped, he should have said so instead of offering to open his home and his life to them, been honest with her about what he wanted the way she had been honest with him.

Maybe she wouldn’t be the best parent and maybe he wouldn’t be either, but they could try. The two of them together had to be better than just one of them. Kids were happier with two parents, weren’t they?

She hadn’t had any parents at all, so two sounded better than one in her mind. A nice matching set, like a Christmas card or a cereal commercial. A happy family with bright smiles and kind words and the certainty that they would be there for each other.

The skin of her stomach was still flat when she placed her palm carefully beneath her navel, doing her best to guess where her baby was growing. Right now, it was safe and protected…loved.

Her baby deserved to have everything that she hadn’t been lucky enough to have herself.

Every.

Single.

Thing.

A home. A mother. A father. Love from both of them.

She was so torn between her fears for herself and her hopes for the baby that she felt it might tear her in two. Her mind whirled from one possibility to the other until, beaten down and exhausted by her own emotions, she had to admit that she wouldn’t be able to figure this out on her own.

She didn’t bother to wait for the sun to begin rising in her window before crawling out of her bed and calling a familiar New York number. She didn’t calculate the time difference but she knew it didn’t matter. There would always be someone on the other end to answer her, no matter how far or fast she ran and she needed to do it now before she lost her nerve.

“Hello?”

“Finny?”

“Hey Peanut…” He drifted off as she sniffled, concern sharpening his voice as he asked, “What’s wrong?”

She sobbed into her hand, the whole story spilling out of her with a rush of white hot shame as he listened without interruption. When she was done, her breath hung suspended in her lungs as she waited for him to speak, waited for the judgment that she feared was coming. 

“Are you okay?” he asked instead. “You’re feeling alright and you’re eating?”

“Yes,” she said, sighing in relief and wiping her cheeks with a bit of her bedsheet.

“Good,” he said. “You know all I want is for you to be healthy and happy.”

“I don’t know how to be happy,” she wailed. “He wants me to live with him! Says we don’t have to get married if I don’t want to but he wants to take care of us because he messed things up with his fist wife and now she’s dead!”

She knew she was a bit hysterical, her voice edging up in pitch until it was nearly painful even for her own ears, but Finn didn’t flinch at all. 

“Do you even like him?” he asked patiently. 

She paused at that, blinking in the dark bedroom as she thought about Ben’s face and the way his eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled and how safe she’d felt in his arms. “I do like him,” she admitted. 

“Well, you deserve to be taken care of finally,” Finn said. “And I think that if he’s willing, you should let him be a father. The baby deserves that and you shouldn’t have to do this all alone.”

“He’s only doing it because of the baby,” she said flatly, struggling with the heart of her conflict. She didn’t want to have to depend on anyone, but she wanted there to be someone in her life that was dependable. Someone that wanted her for herself. 

Finn had been dependable, but he had his own friends and his own family. What she had gotten from them in New York had been enough to show her what she’d been missing, enough to whet her appetite for intimacy and emotional closeness, but it hadn’t been enough. They would all go on and leave her behind, so she’d run first. 

Maybe Ben wouldn’t run. 

Not if she and the baby were his family. 

“Do you think he only wants the baby and not you?” Finn asked. “Does he not like you?”

“He seems to like me but…” Rey sighed. “I don’t know. I want the baby to have a real family, not a pretend one.”

“You want him to really care about you,” Finn said, astute as always. 

“Maybe,” she said evasively. “I don’t know what I want, except that I want what’s best for the baby.”

“Then tell him that,” Finn advised. “Be honest with him about what you think is best. If you want the baby to have a family where you two are married and everything is very then say that to him. There’s no shame in wanting that, Rey. Not after everything you’ve been through.”

“I’m so sorry that I left,” she said. “I was just so afraid that all of you were going to get married and have families and leave me behind.”

“I know, Peanut,” he said. “The thing is though that you didn’t leave us behind. We’re still here and we still love you. Call Rose when you get a chance, okay? She’d been worried about you.”

“I will,” Rey promised. 

She wept quietly through the rest of the call, promising to update Finn as soon as she knew how things turned out with Ben, before hanging up and pulling on her clothes. A quick breakfast of unflavored oatmeal settled the morning sickness, and she shoved her keys into her pocket as she hurried down the hallway toward the elevator.

The subway wasn’t as crowded this early in the morning, and she spent the ride to Ben’s house lost in thought and worry.

She almost lost her nerve when she realized that showing up at his house as the sun was creeping into the sky might mean he wasn’t even awake, that he might be less agreeable to her if she woke him at dawn by pounding on his front door.

The woman beside her shot her a worried look as she swallowed down a bout of hysterical laughter at the thought.

Would life be so cruel to her that he could turn her away now? After she had finally scraped together the courage that she needed to go to him and give him and their child a chance?

Tears were wet on her cheeks as she slipped out of the subway at Ben’s stop, but she refused to run this time. If he turned her away then she would know that he was at bad as her parents had been, but at least  _ she _ wouldn’t be as bad as her parents had been.

She stood on his doorstep, hands shaking as she waited for him to answer. Minutes ticked by until she was certain that he was still asleep. She wondered if maybe she should leave, come back later when he was more likely to be awake, and was half turned away when she heard a crash on the other side of the door and swift curse in his familiar voice.

She giggled as he wrenched the door open, the sound trailing away as she took in his untidy hair and disheveled appearance. It looked like he had fallen asleep in the same clothes he’d been wearing when she had seen him the day before and the dark circles under his eyes told her that he hadn’t rested well.

“Rey,” he said quickly, pushing the door open wider for her to step through, inviting her in with a hopeful look.

She shook her head slightly, not willing to budge from her stop in the doorway until he’d heard what she came here to say.

“I…” Words failed her, choked out of existence by tears that she had to clear from her throat before she could try again. “I thought about what you said.”

He nodded slowly, his eyes searching her face. “And?”

“And I think that I want what you’re offering me, offering  _ us _ ,” she said, amending her words quickly to include the baby. “I want this kid to have everything that I didn’t have and that includes you.”

He relaxed as she spoke, his body visibly becoming less tense as he grinned at her.

“But,” she said firmly, “that means I want the real family. None of that pretend stuff, kids always see through it. You’re going to have to just…learn to be happy in this relationship or something.”

“I can be good to you,” he agreed without hesitation. “Good to both of you, not just the baby.”

She crossed her arms over her chest and stared at him with what she hoped was an intimidating expression. “I mean it… I want the whole Hallmark channel perfect family bullshit so you’re going to have to marry me and all of that. We aren’t going to do any of this half-assed. The baby deserves better than that.”

“Alright,” he agreed. “I can do that.”

The fight went out of her and she slumped a little at the words. He’d agreed to everything that she wanted, everything that she thought would make life good and happy and normal for the baby…why did she feel so defeated?

She shrugged indifferently when he asked her to come inside, but she still didn’t move any closer to the door.

“What’s wrong, Rey?” he asked. “Was there something else that you wanted.”

“I’m just scared,” she admitted. “I don’t know how to do any of this and…and the first time that someone has ever wanted to care about me in my life is not even really for me.”

It came out in a horrifying rush and he lifted a brow at her in surprise.

“I’m scared, too,” he told her. He reached for her hand and she didn’t pull away, letting him wrap his fingers around hers and rub soothing circles on her knuckles with his thumb. He stepped outside, the sun finally peeking over the rooftops enough to illuminate his face as he stepped in close to her. “And I want the baby, but I also want you. I wanted you from the moment I saw you and I wanted you when I thought you’d run out of my life for good. That was the longest two months of my life.”

She sniffled and looked down at his chest, but he hooked a finger under her chin and lifted her face until she was forced to look at him.

“I don’t know if we can love each other but I promise that I’m going to try,” he said, and his lips were soft on her cheek as he kissed away the tears there. “Welcome home, Rey.”


	5. Chapter 5

“Are you enjoying the festival?”

Ben looked them over closely as he waited for an answer, checking both Rey and the baby for signs of fatigue or sunburn or hunger. Rey complained often about how attentive he was, but her protests were always good natured, and he had no intention of letting them be uncomfortable if he could help it.

Fatherhood suited him much more than he’d thought possible and he grew more certain with every passing day that he was going to do a better job as a husband this time than he had in his first marriage. Rey seemed happy and that was a personal accomplishment that he was quite proud of.

“It’s beautiful,” she said, a bright grin on her face as she stretched up on tiptoe to peek around the crowd. “I understand now why it’s your favorite.”

“I bet you didn’t think you’d be coming to the Star Festival with me when I told you about the night we met,” he mused, and she turned back to face him with a laugh.

“I wasn’t sure I’d even still be in Tokyo,” she agreed. “I was still so scared and running from everything and everyone.”

“I’m glad you ran to me,” he told her softly and he meant it. The months since Rey had come to live with him hadn’t been easy. They were both prickly and stubborn and used to being alone, but he had gotten to be with her as she’d fallen in love with Japan and then again when Sakura was born, and she’d fallen in love with their daughter.

The look of awed reverence on her face when the trees had begun to pinken with cherry blossoms in the spring would always one of his favorite memories. She’d been cranky and irritable at the end of her pregnancy but one look at the soft pink blossoms had been enough to brighten her face with joy.

Rey had worn that same look the first time she’d looked at their child’s tiny face, quickly taking in that she had her mother’s nose and her father’s inky black curls, and she’d readily agreed when he suggested that they name the baby after the flowers.

That had been three months ago, and Ben thought that each of them had gotten lovelier every day since.

“Do you still miss Yua?”

Ben frowned at her, taken aback by the question. One of the first things Rey had done when she’d agreed to marry him had been to sit him down and ask him questions all night long. A great many of them had been about his wife—how they had met, why wasn’t she happy, how she had died—and he had answered them all as truthfully and honestly as he’d been able to. She hadn’t asked again after that and he hadn’t brought it up either for fear of upsetting her.

“Yes,” he admitted. “I wasn’t a good husband and she deserved better, but I did love her and sometimes…sometimes I wish I could see her again and apologize for making her unhappy.”

He waited anxiously, afraid that she might worry that he would prefer that Yua was still here instead of her, but Rey only nodded slightly.

“It’s good that you miss her,” she said after a moment. “Love shouldn’t really go away, should it? Not when you really someone and if they aren’t perfect.”

“No, it shouldn’t,” he agreed. “Why are you wondering about it all of a sudden?”

She grinned up at him mischievously. “It’s the Star Festival, aren’t we all supposed to be thinking about love and how well it stands the test of time?”

“I suppose we are,” he said. “And hoping for good weather.”

They both looked up at the blue sky above them, cloudless and welcoming and pressed a quick kiss to her cheek and then to Sakura’s soft forehead as she slept in her mother’s arms.

“I think they’ll get to see each other this year,” Rey mused.

“I think so, too.”

She held his hand as they navigated through the crowd to taste the foods and experience the sights and sounds of the festival. For Ben, it was a celebration that reminded him of everything that he loved about the place he had learned to call home, one that he was excited to share with his wife and daughter for the first time as Rey exclaimed joyfully over the bright colors and happy atmosphere.

“And what is this for?” she asked some time later, patting Sakura on the back as they watched a line of people writing on small pieces of paper and attaching them to the green lines of bamboo stalks.

“Tanzaku,” he explained. “You hang a wish.”

“Hmm,” she said speculatively. “Any wish?”

“I think so,” he agreed. “What would you like to wish for?”

“Oh no,” she teased, “I know how wishes work and you aren’t supposed to tell, or they won’t come true.”

“All right,” he said. “Let me hold Sakura so you put up your secret wish.”

“Don’t you want to hang one?”

“I’m still thinking,” he said. “I have more already than I ever thought possible.”

“I know exactly what I’m going to wish for,” she said firmly, shifting the baby from her arms to his and turning her back on him to scribble her wish on a piece of paper.

“Of course she does,” he said to Sakura as she looked up at him with wide eyes and one chubby fist shoved into her mouth. “Your mom is always a step ahead of me, isn’t she? I only want two things and I already have both of you.”

Sakura closed her eyes on a soft sigh, relaxing in his arms as he swayed and watched Rey creep closer to being able to hang her wish. He certainly had as much of her as he’d ever dared to hope for, but there was a small twinge in his chest as she turned to look over her shoulder and smile at them.

They were a family, she was his wife and the mother of his child, but even though she’d settled into their life together and no longer looked at him like she was thinking about bolting out of his life at the first opportunity she had never told him that she loved him. He was terrified to be the first one to say it and put that terrified look back in her eyes where he feared she might flee at any moment and she hadn’t said it herself even once in all of this time.

He knew he didn’t have to hear the words in order to be happy. They had everything that she had wanted them to create for their daughter and their lives together had become solid and peaceful, but he also knew that he’d be lying to himself if he said that he didn’t  _ want  _ to hear them.

It was far more customary in Japan for people to express their love through action than words, something that he’d failed miserably at in his first marriage, but he was a selfish man and he wanted the actions and the words. He’d have every part of her if she’d let him. 

“Well, I did say any wish,” he muttered and when Rey hurried back over to them with a triumphant smile, he handed the baby back and scribbled his own wish down-

_ I just want to know that my wife loves me _

Maybe it was foolish but there was nothing else that he could think of that would mean as much to him as that and he set his jaw determinedly as he tied the paper to the bamboo amongst the other wishes.

She was waiting for him when he turned back around, pressing kisses to their daughter’s cheeks and smiling, so much softer and more vulnerable than she had been when they’d met. He knew how much faith and courage it had taken for her to open herself up to him this far and he knew that with time it was possible that she might be willing to love him more fully.

All he had to do was wait and have patience.

“Ready to take this sweet girl and go home?” he asked, pulling Rey against him and kissing her softly.

“It has been a long day,” she admitted. “Thank you for bringing us.”

“Anything for you,” he said. He turned away to lead them through the crowd but he didn’t miss the way her eyes lingered on the small piece of paper that she had attached to the bamboo. 

“Are you sure you don’t want to tell me your wish?” he asked again. 

“It’s probably not something that a wish could grant me anyway,” she grumbled. “So, I guess it doesn’t matter if I tell you. I wished for courage.”

“Courage? You’re already the bravest person I know,” he pointed out. “What could you possibly need with more courage?”

“It’s just...I just have something I need to say and I haven’t been able to say it.”

His heart fluttered in his chest but he kept his face impassive as they walked. He wouldn’t push or pressure her, even if his hopes were high. 

“Take your time,” he advised. “I’m sure if whatever you have to say is so important that it makes even you nervous then it’s worth waiting for.”


End file.
